Thursday, February 18, 2010

Race and parental alcohol abuse

The MIDUS study asked 2,556 people if either of their parents drank so much that is caused  problems. Here are the estimates by race/ethnicity:

Percent
Mexican American 56.2
Amerindian 38.1
Black 28.7*
White 25.1*
Asian 14.3 

* significantly less than Mexican Americans at the 95% confidence level

The parents of Mex-Ams are four times as likely to have a drinking problem as Asian Americans.

1 comment:

  1. Sgt. Joe Friday8:53 AM

    Interesting, since most stuff in the media I've seen puts the rate of alcoholism at around 10% of the population. This suggests that the percentage is much higher.

    I've always suspected more people get loaded than admit to it. Not to mention that behavior that was considered "normal" by my parents' generation (e.g. a salesman having 2 or 3 drinks at lunch while entertaining a customer) would probably get you labeled a drunkard by today's standards. Everybody's more uptight these days and fewer and fewer seem to be getting any enjoyment out of life.

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